Albanian mezzo-soprano Enkelejda Shkosa was born in Tirana and studied at the city’s Conservatory and later at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan, winning the Leyla Gencer Singing Competition in Istanbul in 1995 and immediately finding herself in demand at leading Italian opera houses and at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro.
She has performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Paris Opéra, the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, La Scala, Milan, the Dresden, Vienna and Munich State Operas, the Rome Opera, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Among the conductors with whom she has worked are Colin Davis, Riccardo Chailly, Bruno Campanella, Myung-Whun Chung, James Conlon, Daniel Oren, Antonio Pappano, Fabio Luisi, Daniele Gatti, Evelino Pidò, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Fabio Biondi, Donato Renzetti, Marcello Viotti, Carlo Rizzi and Vladimir Jurowski.
Her engagements have included Suzuki (Madama Butterfly) in London, Madrid and Amsterdam, Hedwige (Guillaume Tell) in Bologna, London, Lyon and Palermo and Azucena (Il trovatore) in Toulon, Tenerife, Cagliari, the Sferisterio Festival in Macerata, the Teatro Regio in Parma and Tel Aviv, where she has also been heard as Preziosilla (La forza del destino) and in Verdi’s Requiem.
She has additionally been heard as Isabella (L’italiana in Algeri) in Treviso and Ferrara, as Mistress Quickly (Falstaff) at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples as well as in Palma and Tokyo, in Verdi’s Requiem in Lisbon, Tenerife and Dublin, in Rossini’s Stabat Mater in Pesaro, in Dvořák’s Stabat Mater in Bologna under Michele Mariotti, as Adelma in Busoni’s Turandot and as the Princess (Suor Angelica) in Cagliari, as Zita (Gianni Schicchi) in Amsterdam, as Fenena (Nabucco) in Turin, Lyon and on tour, as Amneris (Aida) for the Opéra national de Lorraine, as the Marquise de Berkenfield (La Fille du régiment) at Covent Garden, as Anaide in Leoncavallo’s Zazà and as Marcellina (Le nozze di Figaro) at the Theater an der Wien, as Geneviève (Pelléas et Mélisande) at the Teatro Regio in Parma, as the Woman with the Purple Nose in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Christmas Eve for the Frankfurt Opera, as Mistress Bentson (Lakmé) and in roles in Debussy’s La Damoiselle élue and Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher at the Teatro Real in Madrid.
Plans include Ulrica (Un ballo in maschera) in Tenerife.
